Islands of Integration or Islands of Marginality? Dynamics of Belonging and Otherisation in the Sahelian Chad

Bibliographic Data

ID2143243
AuthorsColosio (0000-0001-8272-0498, Social Sciences University of Ankara, Turkey, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume89
Issue4
Pages679-697
Publication date2024-08-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1844 • E-ISSN: 1469-588X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00141844.2022.2057562
OpenAlexW4221114144
LanguageEN
References cited15

Histories of othering through race, ethnicity, or other forms of belonging follow context-specific trajectories. Building on nine months' fieldwork in Chad, this article engages with discussions about othering in postcolonial Africa. The article moves from the description of micro-divisions in the Guéra province, in the Chadian Sahel, to discuss theoretical paradigms connecting African discourses on race and ethnicity to precolonial cleavages or colonial divisions, and theories that connect emerging ideas of autochthony with neoliberal reforms of governance. It shows that both precolonial cleavages and colonial shaping of identities were contradictory and remain important because of their use by French colonial and Chad postcolonial governments to divide and rule local people. This has fostered forms of political competition based on othering further reinforced by neoliberal reforms of local governance. The increasing dynamics of othering are not therefore specific to Guéra's cleavages but connected to divisive forms of governance

Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Corporate governance · Ethnic group · Geography · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Sociology · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender